Digging Up Jack
by Sat-Isis
Summary: Best friends will help you bury a body, but best enemies will help you dig it back up again. From the same AU as A Bit of Fun. Features Norrington, Jack, Elizabeth, Will, Gibbs, Pintel, Ragetti, Tia Dalma, Barbossa, and Anamaria.


Title: Digging Up Jack  
Style: Prose  
Genre: Supernatural, Black Comedy  
Rating: R  
Length: Fic  
Pairings: Will/Elizabeth, Jack/Pearl, Moog, unrequited Norribeth  
Warnings: AU DMC and AWE, Character Death, Vomit, Purification  
Authoress: **cassiopaya**  
Characters: James Norrington, Elizabeth Swann, William Turner, Jack Sparrow, Tia Dalma, Barbossa, Pintel and Ragetti, Anamaria, and Joshamee Gibbs.  
Word Count: 1,600  
Disclaimer: Not mine.  
Dedication: **lady_elizabeth2**  
Summary: Best friends will help you bury a body, but best enemies will help you dig it back up again.

Notes: Part of an epic **lady_elizabeth2** and I are working on: Hello Jack.

***

"Dear God," James said as the sweat stung his eyes and the bile trying to rise past the viscous clenching of his stomach threatened tears, "and I thought he smelled bad when he was alive!" Elizabeth vomited into the sandy earth as the worst smell she had ever been witness to assault her nose. William had to step back from the grave as he was sick in sympathy. "I've smelt worse," Barbossa boasted, unaffected by the sticky, sweet scent of decay. Gibbs rolled his eyes, crossed his arms over the hand of his shovel, and retorted, "Oh, good for you." "If you had not shot him none of us would have to be here!" Elizabeth vented her spleen at Norrington, wiping the vitriol from her mouth with her sleeve.

"Dance, my pretties! Dance!" Jack chortled as he mimed holding marionette strings above their heads. The insects were everywhere, buzzing up a din and having trouble deciding which was better: succulent grave meat or fresh, hot vomit.

"None of this is helping," Will said after clearing the vomit from his nose.

"Quickly, den now, quickly. Time grows short," warned Tia Dalma as she scanned the horizon, scenting ships on the wind. Shovels were abandoned for bare hands that carefully clawed out the sandy soil from around Sparrow's putrefying corpse. Elizabeth retreated to Tia Dalma's side as the men toiled in the heat of the noonday sun to fully exhume the body and strip it of its last preternatural accoutrement.

"It would have been nice to know we needed this 'piece of eight' before we buried him," Norrington scolded, shuddering as his hand scooped too close to the body and slid the skin right off with a sweep of sand, exposing the slimy tissue underneath.

"Believe you me, if I had known he was an actual Pirate Lord, I would have taken the piece of eight myself from his corpse the minute your back was turned – assuming I would have known what it was," Gibbs grumbled, "Let's just hope it wasn't his hat."

"Nothing so large as a hat, but nothing so valuable as a bauble. That is what we are looking for," Barbossa said as he slid off Jack's rings and pocketed them.

"Stop that!" Norrington chided with a glower. "You tell him, mate!" Jack said, standing behind James and matching his frown at his formerly dead, formerly first mate. Barbossa rolled his eyes, "Oh, let's not pretend this isn't the first time you've been stealing from the dead."

"You son of a bitch," Norrington started to stand, ready to step over Sparrow's corpse and smash his fist into the cocky bastard's face – because he was right. Norrington had stolen from this dead man once before. "Now, now," Gibbs intervened, "Less fighting and more digging, aye?"

"Put them back," Norrington ordered Barbossa. "Or what?" the pirate queried menacingly. James stood up, so did Barbossa. Gibbs stepped back. Jack danced and clapped, "O, la! A fight over me!"

"What are you doing?" Elizabeth shouted. "What mon always do, cause more problems den what dey worth," Tia Dalma sagely informed. "Men!" Elizabeth fumed.

William jumped up and pressed himself between James and Barbossa. "This isn't helping!" he reiterated and was suddenly struck with a brilliant idea: "Elizabeth can find it!"

"What?" Norrington, Barbossa, Gibbs, Elizabeth, and Jack cried in unison. "Just as I said, a touch o' destiny," Tia Dalma smiled to herself. Will ran up to Elizabeth and grasped her arms, "Elizabeth, you want to find Jack's piece of eight!" Elizabeth pushed him aside and threw up again in the sand from the sticky smell of death Will had just rubbed all over her shirt with his filthy hands. Young Turner dropped to his knees and spewed his guts into the sand as well.

"Ah, you can tell they're in love," Gibbs said. Norrington and Barbossa turned to look askance at him. Jack frowned; he had been hoping he could have watched them tear at each other a little while longer.

Elizabeth made her way shakily to the open grave, her fingers clamped over her nose. "I have a handkerchief in my pocket, Elizabeth," Norrington informed her and offered up his side to her hand. Jack whispered something lewd into Will's ear; Elizabeth would not find a handkerchief in Norrington's pocket, but something entirely more…exciting.

Will marched up, reached into Norrington's pocket himself and plucked out the handkerchief. Elizabeth glared at him when he offered it to her; he had gotten Jack's purification all over it. "Why do you think I did not hand it to her myself, Mr. Turner?" James asked with a growl, upset over having putrefied Jack in his vest pocket.

William had the good sense to be embarrassed over his flash of jealousy and its consequence. Really, he had no idea what had come over him. Tia Dalma glared at Jack and his foolishness; Jack grinned and stuck his tongue out at her.

"Mr. Gibbs, take the shovels back to the boat," Norrington ordered. Gibbs was not happy about it, knowing he would miss when Jack's piece of eight was discovered, but it was his own fault for opening his mouth in the first place. "Aye, aye, Captain," he replied and began gathering the shovels.

Tia Dalma walked up to the open grave to observe the finding of a key that could unlock her from bondage. Elizabeth was kneeling next to the open grave and slowly sweeping the compass over Jack's body, waiting for the needle to still itself over his piece of eight. As the needle came to a slight pause over his head, Jack readied himself to flick the needling and send it spinning again.

Before Sparrow knew what hit him, a gust of wind sent him tumbling over the beach, skipping across the water, and slipping through the bulkhead of the Pearl. "An' stay dere," Tia Dalma's commanded echoed silently to mortal ears across the distance.

"I think this is it," Elizabeth said and the compass was still over Jack's bandana. She moved the compass a bit more, to get a more precise reading and found Sparrow's beads to be the source of magnetism.

"Allow me, Elizabeth," James said as he bent down to rip the beads from their thread. Elizabeth stepped back and snapped the compass shut. When Norrington tugged, Jack's scalp detached and slithered off of his skull entirely, leaving James holding the dripping dreads by a thread of hair.

"Oh, God," Norrington choked out as he turned green. Elizabeth turned white and William cringed at the thought of being sick. Again. Tia Dalma and Barbossa looked on as James emptied his bile into the sand, then Elizabeth and Turner followed suit. Flicking a bit of Jack's flesh from under his finger nail Barbossa informed, "I'm going back to the boats," and walked off.

Tia Dalma walked up to Norrington, unsheathed the dagger she had hidden in her bodice, and cut the piece of eight from the scalp. Tossing the dreads back into the grave she said, "Cover 'im back up," and she cleaned her blade in the sand before walking off towards the boats.

Norrington slid the piece of eight that was now his, ironically making him a Pirate Lord, into the vest pocket that was already ruined and scooped up sand and soil to throw back over the grave. Turner pushed the piled up grave filling back over the hole and Elizabeth aided with one hand in the dirt and one hand over her nose. It was easier to fill up the hole than it had been to dig it in the first place. They were all hopeful that they would never have to do any of that again. Ever.

Norrington, Turner, and Elizabeth shambled back to the boats, some of the insects buzzing merrily behind them, to find Pintel and Ragetti grimacing at the scent of them. Gibbs, Barbossa, and Tia Dalma were already aboard The Black Pearl. If Anamaria were not Norrington's First he would have been worried over a mutiny and a marooning.

Will and Norrington rinsed their hands in the surf as Pintel held the boat for Ragetti to help Elizabeth over the side. Once Ragetti and Pintel were over the side themselves, James and William shoved off and swung themselves into the boat. The men took to the oars and Elizabeth manned the rudder. Eventually the insects flitted back to the land, not enjoying the open water, but the sticky smell of decay remained firmly attached.

"What are you sourpusses making faces at?" Elizabeth demanded after she had had enough of Pintel and Ragetti's disgusted looks. "You stink," Pintel said and Ragetti giggled, "Yeah, you all stink." Elizabeth huffed and fumed for the rest of the row back to the Pearl in the uncomfortable, smelly silence. Coming from Pintel and Ragetti, being told one stank actually meant something.


End file.
